


A White Lane Lined With Cypress

by Jaydee_Faire



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, Blood, Broken Bones, Darkest Timeline, Demonic Possession, Flashbacks, Fratricide, Fucked (Nearly) to Death, Gen, Graphic Violence, Horror, Implied Relationships, Incest, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mind Control, Other, Rape, Religion, Religious Guilt, Sibling Incest, Slavery, Zombification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:13:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26556406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydee_Faire/pseuds/Jaydee_Faire
Summary: Zalbaag Beoulve reaps his rewards for his lifetime of loyalty and obedience.
Relationships: Adramelech/Zalbaag Beoulve, Wiegraf Folles/Zalbaag Beoulve
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	A White Lane Lined With Cypress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CorpseBrigadier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/gifts).



The heel of his boot hit something slick and slid; Zalbaag stumbled sideways, tripping over his heavy feet until he clattered against something hard. He blinked at it, struggling to bring it into focus. A stone bench, but made to a giant’s proportions, the seat of it nearly reaching his shoulder. He leaned into it, watching the candles smear and blur across his vision, and tried to remember where he was. 

_He’d been down in town--no, riding hard up the wide road toward the keep. He’d leapt down from the saddle, leaving his mount to rear and bugle its alarm as he’d drawn his sword and taken the steps up to the doors two at a time--_

He felt drunk. Yes, there amongst the shards of memory: a dark spill of wine on the carpet, dashed from a familiar hand. Dycedarg would be cross if he knew. But best, most honest, would be to find him and tell him. Find Dycedarg. Tell him… Tell him something. He couldn’t remember now.

Zalbaag lifted his head, peering around him. Littered around him were strange shapes and spills of ink, wavering and warping in the flickering light. It smelled of damp here, of churned soil and dust and, distantly, iodine. Low tide. Offal.

The hair on his neck prickled before he heard the step behind him. He whirled, and found his blade in his hand at the same moment that the man behind him caught it and jerked it out of his grasp. A chain clinked, going taut, and Zalbaag went to his knees. 

“All of your skill,” someone said, “your devotion, your training, and your experience, and still your greatest talent lies in following orders.”

Zalbaag hunched forward, his arm held aloft by the chain and the one who held it. With great difficulty, he lifted his head. A heavy iron cuff had been fastened around his wrist, tight enough that he could see the red, ragged edge of his flesh where the metal had dug in. A short chain extended from that to the hilt of a sword-- _his_ sword--whose blade the person standing over him still grasped.

“We had thought to dispose of you, until your Lord Brother suggested we put you to the use to which you were bred. You made short work of one whose blood had proven hard to spill.” 

The blade was released; Zalbaag slumped against the stone again, watching his sword clatter down several steps to rest point-first in an ink-dark pool. Someone lay there, fair hair slicked to red points against a beardless jaw.

_”He must not leave this cathedral alive!”_

The room tilted sideways. The dreamlike fog slammed into painful focus, the candles flaring bright, the queer stripes and smears of ink turning to crimson. Bodies lay cooling against walls, behind pillars, one with his hands still covering his face, fingers lax now and drooping. 

And there, at the bottom of the stairs--

“In the end, he could not raise arms against his own kin.”

Zalbaag looked up at the man standing over him. A Templar’s golden armor and tabard, and a face that had glowered at him from handbills posted all throughout Gallione. A man he’d fought beside, once, and had called comrade and friend and then traitor. 

“W--” It hurt, making his mouth move: he could feel the skin of his cheeks stretching, his lips cracking like badly stored vellum. “Wiegraf Folles?”

The smile that stole across Wiegraf’s face ill fit him: a madman’s grimace that showed too many teeth. The flickering light in the tomb cast odd shadows, making it seem like a black halo rested atop his curls of burnished brass. 

“I… thought you dead,” Zalbaag said. 

“Is that so? I thought the same of you.”

“I had heard… there was a report…” Zalbaag closed his eyes, brow furrowing. “From…”

There was a dry chuckle; Zalbaag opened his eyes again. “You speak of the massacre at Riovanes,” Wiegraf said. “So much blood soaked the earth there that the rivers ran red for days.”

“Riovanes-- yes.” A memory stabbed at him like an abscessed tooth. Thousands had been found dead in the keep and down in the town itself. Bodies ripped into pieces, crushed beyond all recognition. He’d read the report, scanning names, afraid to breathe. That same dread bubbled up now, seconds spilling through an hourglass and dragging him down with them towards…

_Charging through the halls with his sword in his hand-- the splinter and crack of the thick oak door-- the glass knocked from between pale, spidery fingers, red liquid flying out in an arc--_

_A creature, a grotesquery of slotted eyes and twisting horns, whose cloven feet scraped and grated on the flagstones as it came toward him. A trembling had come over him then as he stood transfixed in its shadow; the thing had put its muzzle against his chest to breathe in his scent before snorting it out, a smell like the mildewed bottom of a hayrick washing over him and setting his cape fluttering._

_Zalbaag’s body had responded where his mind could not find traction: his sword had jerked up and lashed out, drawing a line of red across the creature’s chest. A shriek-- part animal pain, part outrage-- and had readied himself to parry a swipe from those enormous claws, only for the world to suddenly flash white around him and then vanish, leaving him in a vast darkness surrounded by floating afterimages._

“Had you not wounded Adrammelech, he may well have granted you a clean death,” Wiegraf said. 

_Blind and in pain, gritting his teeth as someone tried to force his mouth open. His chin had been seized and dragged down and he’d felt his jawbone snap, molars hinging apart and then grinding back together when he was released._

“But he was right: there is so much work left to be done, and there you were with still so much use to you.”

_”A waste, to spend your rage in him. He will recall little of it when it is done.”_

_“I will see that he remembers_ this.” 

_That smell again, hot and damp, of a crop rotting in the fields before it could be harvested. He’d ridden through acres of flooded farmland in Gallione, smelled the blight riding on the breeze._

Wiegraf took up the chain still dangling from Zalbaag’s wrist and pulled, dragging Zalbaag to his feet. Another tug sent him stumbling forward, and he could feel the break in his jaw flexing as Wiegraf took his chin between finger and thumb.

_The grit scattered across the table was clinging to his skin, collecting behind his knees and in the cleft of his buttocks, digging in harder with each thrust. Again, he tried to buck away, fingers scrabbling uselessly against the powerful claws that gripped him; his legs were jerked further apart in response and the joint of his hip could only hold for a moment before it was ripped out of place._

“Tell me, Ser Beoulve,” Wiegraf asked silkily, “is it true that you moaned like a whore while your brother fucked you?”

Zalbaag recoiled. Wiegraf released him, laughing, then raised his hands in a mockery of contrition when Zalbaag grasped the chained hilt of his sword. “You mourned me so when you’d thought my body lay bloating and oozing in Riovanes’ keep. Now a few rough jests has you taking up arms against a comrade. Although,” he added, grinning, “you _have_ been the death of everyone else you claimed to love. I suppose I must be next.”

“You’re one of them,” Zalbaag choked. “You and the rest of the Templar-- and--” his brother’s name caught in his throat and stung in his eyes, and when he lifted a hand to brush away the moisture on his cheek, his fingers came away smeared with black.

He backed against the squared-off stone and braced his arm against it to steady himself. A carving along the top of it caught his eye: a man in armor, hands folded over the hilt of his sword. 

A coffin. It was a coffin, the heavy stone lid jutted to one side as if something had recently crawled out of it. He jerked himself away from it, shuddering, and rounded to face Wiegraf again, sword raised, as the man stepped closer. 

“I did not think to discover you in such a state,” Wiegraf said. “It seems Adrammelech’s hold over you waned when he returned to Eagrose, and you have awoken as innocent to your crimes as a newborn babe entering the world drenched in blood.”

Zalbaag’s eyes flicked again to the blood still drying on the walls, to the body laying at the bottom of the stairs. 

The device on the armor was unfamiliar, but the long legs, the waspish waist, the fair eyelashes and the soft lines of a young face not yet old enough to be darkened with stubble came together abruptly in his mind to create a horrifying whole. He’d forgotten that the lad had cut his hair short, forgotten how tall and broad a young boy could grow in a year. 

They had quarreled, the last time they’d seen each other. Zalbaag could not even recall why, only his younger brother’s expression as they’d parted, hurt and betrayal writ plain on his face. His peaceful stillness might have been mistaken for slumber, save that he bedded on blood soaked stone.

“A messenger came with word that the Heretic stood at the gates,” Wiegraf said. He’d slipped past the reach of Zalbaag’s sword, catching the chain attached to Zalbaag’s wrist once more. “Folmarv only thought to put you in his path to slow him down. None of us supposed an empty-eyed thrall would be any match for him.”

“I did this,” Zalbaag said hollowly, still staring at Ramza’s body, laying with one arm extended as if he’d raised his hands to defend himself. His sword was still sheathed at his hip.

_”Lord Brother, it is I! Do you not know your own blood?”_

“None who entered escaped your blade.” Wiegraf had come close enough to speak the next words into Zalbaag’s ear. “Such is the power of the auracite, and a testament to how loyal a hound you are: even blind, deaf, and unfeeling, you bring a swift and bloody end to whoever your Master looses you on. And are you not at your most content when being used?”

“No,” Zalbaag said, but he was unable to pull away from Wiegraf’s creeping touch. “No, I--”

“You have already committed the most grievous of sins tonight,” Wiegraf reminded him. “When history records you as sodomite and kinslayer, will they append ‘liar’ to the list as well?” 

Zalbaag’s knees buckled; Wiegraf caught him neatly, pushing him half across the lid of the coffin. “A Knight Devout so burdened by sin that he fell easily to his knees before any who agreed not to speak of it,” Wiegraf said. “How many nights had you spent chafing your knees before the altar, whispering prayers into the predella in hopes Saint Ajora would hear and grant you peace?”

_”Heavenly Father, please, my life I would gladly give, if you would but free me from the burden of these thoughts…”_

He had Zalbaag’s sword in his hand now, sliding the point across the man’s belly until it caught against the fine white embroidery of his tunic. “It is still the highest of saints that you serve, Zalbaag, and still peace that you fight for. A great and final silence, save for the whisper of ash on the wind.”

The blade was cold plunging into him. Zalbaag jerked, but felt no pain, even as it met the stone of the coffin lid beneath him, skipping and skidding across the carving there. “Have your prayers not been granted?” Wiegraf asked. “All will and thought taken from you, so that you may be a vessel for Her will.” He withdrew the blade, spilling salt and ichor across the stone. “You feel it, do you not? The power of the auracite swelling, our plans nearing completion. She comes, Zalbaag, and She will bring with her the salvation you have so long sought. Your sins will be absolved in cleansing flame.”

The ground had begun to tremble; dust floated down from the ceiling. A distant roll of thunder grew into a terrible roar as the wine-dark sea surrounding Mullonde turned crimson, crashing against the jetties in waves of froth and leaving struggling, dying bodies along the shore. The stars fell from the sky in streaks of fire, leaving the heavens dark save for one red slice of moon.

“She calls,” Wiegraf said, dragging Zalbaag to his feet again. “She calls us to her side. Shall we go and see what your loyalty has wrought?”

**Author's Note:**

> I was at a loss for a long time as to what I could write for CorpseBrigadier that would both fulfill the terms of the exchange as well as hit all the different sweet spots of their favorite tropes. I started out with something reading much like my other FFT works, but scrapped it and instead chose to challenge myself to go much, much darker. The result, finished after weeks of agonizing, writing, and rewriting, hits as many of those tropes as it can like a terrifying undead pachinko ball. I really hope Brig enjoys it-- they've been a huge help and inspiration to me and I'm honored to be able to give something back.


End file.
